


silt and seashells

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fem!Bagginshield, Mermaid!Thorin, mermaid au, not-quite-a-roadtrip au, sarcasm and bickering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 17:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11257296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: There is a lake, that was once the sea, and in that lake, or so they say, lives a mermaid, who was trapped by the silt. It all sounds quite wonderful and romantic, until you learn just how annoying the mermaid actually is.In which Bilbo finds a mermaid, and takes her back to the ocean.





	silt and seashells

**Author's Note:**

> My first entry for the Hobbit Big Bang '17!
> 
> Art by the incredible [teaxdragon](https://teaxdragon.tumblr.com/post/162062233457/silt-and-seashells-by-northerntrash-hbb2017#_=_) and the incomparable [rutobuka](http://rutobuka2.tumblr.com/post/162065075484/art-for-northerntrashs-silt-and-seashells#_=_)! Thank you so much guys!

_We wished our two souls_  
might return like gulls  
to the rock.  
\- Robert Lowell

 

* * *

 

 

She had always known about the mermaid.

Knowledge, of course, is a peripheral thing: it had come to her through stories, had stuck with her. Her mother had told her stories at every opportunity – in front of the fire on cold winter evenings, tucked up in bed late at night, on her knee in the garden in the spring sunshine, as they walked hand in hand through the meadows in the summer, whispered into her hair whenever she woke from nightmares. As a child she had believed in any number of tales – fairies and hobgoblins and the snake that lived on the moon, feeding off the stars. They had enchanted her in her youth, filling her mind with the prospect of magic, of wishes, of monsters that slumbered in the dark and waited for innocent children to stumble into their lairs. The mermaid was one of many tales, passed on from mother to daughter. Tales to entertain, to distract an energetic child with the thought of something bigger, greater, more magical than the small and rural life that they lived, that she was destined to remain in.

Other people might have thought that it was simply that – a story.

But Bilbo had never been quite that ordinary. Long after the other children had stopped believing, she still did. Long after everyone else had given up the spark of magic that lights the life of a child with hope and wonder, she clung on to hers still.

_The mermaid knots shells into her hair and can name every creature in the sea._

_The mermaid sings a melody so sweet that she stops the sharks from circling._

_The mermaid finds wishing shells and spells the water to move around her._

_The mermaid dances with the moving sand and drapes herself in water plants._

_The mermaid has scales of silver and gold and swims swifter than anything else in the water._

_The mermaid cries tears of pearls for the family that she has lost, for the family that she can never see again. Too long she slumbered in the dark cliff caves by the submerged shore, for centuries perhaps, and when she woke she discovered that her inlet had been silted up, that her sea was now lake, that her saltwater was turning slowly to fresh, that she was cut off forever from the realm that she had called home._

The mermaid had been Bilbo’s favourite story when she was a little girl, for all that it was a sad one in its heart. But these kinds of stories promised her magic, and even though by the time she was an adult she had never seen any evidence for it she still found herself believing, in a way that she could not quite explain or justify. Perhaps her mother had engrained the stories in her too deep; perhaps she was just too indebted to anything that made her little life seem slightly more special than it really was.

She lived on a small farm outside a small village in a landscape dotted with equally tiny homesteads: it was a small life, and a slow one. No one came to their village, and very little exciting ever happened to her, nor to anyone else in her life. She grew her own vegetables, pruned her rosebushes, tended to her chickens. She had money enough left for her by her parents, and spent her days looking after her small plot of land and reading, curled up in her father’s armchair or laid out in the grass of her garden. She still kept her eyes out for fairies underneath the old oak tree: she still checked under bridges for trolls, but the older she grew the more she came to accept that though there was magic in the world it was not for her to see, not for her to ever experience.

But that didn’t stop her trying.

Because that was the think about Bilbo: when everyone else gave up she carried on. When everyone else stopped believing she reaffirmed her own faith. When everyone else searched for stability, she longed for adventure. She had never really been like other child: stories whispered on dark nights only inspired, never frightened. She was the child that hunted through the forest for goblins, that looked with interest under her bed each night to see if there was a ghoul under there that might be interested in a cup of tea and a friendly chat.

She hadn’t grown out of that.

And that was why, when she found herself particularly bored one day, she had decided to take herself on an adventure. Not a big one, you understand, but a little weekend away, far from the quiet village that she had spent her years in. She remembered the lake that the mermaid was supposed to live in, remembered quiet afternoons on the shore there with her mother, and so she had packed up her little old camper van with her father’s tent and her mother’s sleeping bag, long unused, and all the provisions that she would need for a weekend of sleeping wild in a safe enough place, and set off early on a Friday morning without word to her neighbours, intent on a little fun. She took a book or two, and her own imagination, which had kept her entertained through all manner of times, and arrived to a swelteringly warm afternoon and a crowded beach, which she immediately turned her van from the shore and further along the lake, towards the wooded shoreline at the far end, closest to the sea.

There she found no company but a curious grass snake that hissed at her from the undergrowth, and the chattering of birds in the twisted trees that cast a pleasant shade on the ground. She took her back – oof, rather heavier than she was expecting – locked her van, and set off through the woodland.

A beautiful day to be shore, but she found herself unpleasantly warm far sooner than she had hoped – you’re out of shape, she thought to herself with wry humour – and soon enough found herself collapsing against a tree, close enough to the water that she could see it through the trunks. There was enough space here to pitch her tent, and she was far enough away from the road that she could not see or hear it, and she decided that was rather far enough. Leaning back against the trunk of a lovely old tree, she kicked off her boots, planning on only sitting a moment before pitching up camp-

And she woke sometime later to a splashing sound, jolting upwards suddenly. There was a crick in her neck and an unpleasant taste in her mouth, and she was pretty sure that her nose had burnt in the sun whilst she slept. She rubbed at her eyes, sitting up carefully, blinking her eyes open properly when she heard the splash again. Someone was there – close by, and she immediately felt herself tense up, glancing carefully at the sky. The sun must have been very low in the sky – hardly any sunlight was left, the dimming blue threaded through with gold. She did not stand up, but eased herself across the ground carefully to peer around the tree.

And she blinked.

“ _Do I dare to eat a peach_?” she whispered, a fragment from a poem, the only thing that was coming to mind.

For there, sat on a rock in the shallows, was a mermaid.

She reeled back, but she must have made a sound for the mermaid turned dark eyes to the trees, her glare haughty and cautious. After a moment she lowered herself into the water, her arms strong with muscle, the long line of her tail barely making a sound as it slipped beneath the surface.

“Wait!” Bilbo found herself calling, before she could stop herself. “Please don’t go!”

The mermaid hesitated, for just a moment, enough time for Bilbo to half-fall out from her hiding place, stray leaves stuck in the mess of her hair. She could barely bring herself to care though – not at the sight of the creature in the water. Many of the stories about mermaids were quite clearly not true: the seashell underwear that they wore in so many children’s illustrations were distinctly absent, and Bilbo found herself averting her eyes at the sight of the creature’s breasts, bare in the water. Her hair was long and dark, with strands of seaweed twisted around braids to hold them in place, and there was a touch of blue about her mouth, as if she were colder than she should be. She was also quite terribly beautiful in a way that Bilbo could never have guessed.

Words failing her, Bilbo found herself just staring at the creature, who stared back, haughty and proud.

“Well,” the mermaid said, after a long silence. “Are you going to say anything to me now, or are you just going to gape at me like a fish caught out of water?”

Bilbo blinked.

“That’s rather rude,” she retorted, before she could stop herself. “It’s not everyday one sees a mermaid, you know.”

The mermaid smiled, a little smug.

“It is for me,” she said, before diving beneath the water, and disappearing for good, before Bilbo had a chance to say anything else.

And poor Bilbo simply stared at the water, the ripples left slowly disappearing already.

“Oh dear,” she said, quite to herself, as she left the treeline and padded closer to the shore, lowing herself to sit at the water’s edge, where her bare feet were kissed just now and then by the steady lap of the lake. “It seems I have gone quite mad after all. Lobelia was right, and that is quite an unpleasant thing to have to admit.”

 She didn’t move though, eyes fixed on the water. It had grown cooler whilst she slept, and now the evening was truly upon her, bringing a softer warmth and a gentleness to the light that was comforting to see. There was no movement from the water, but that didn’t stop her looking, and she must have sat there for quite sometime before she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else, a line of a poem she remembered her mother reading her, long ago.

“ _I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”_

With a sudden splash the mermaid resurfaced, startling Bilbo enough that she almost fell back onto the rocks behind her – but for her determination not to look quite as much a fool this time, she probably would have done, but instead she rallied herself impressively, blinking at the mermaid with some trepidation.

“What rot is that?” the mermaid said. “Why on earth would a mermaid sing to you? Or to any two-legs, for that matter?”

Bilbo blinked.

“Well, that’s what all the stories say, isn’t it? That mermaids sing, quite beautifully too, and that sailors fall in love with them?”

The mermaid was still glaring, folding her arms underneath the water now. She looked rather offended, but she did not disappear, for which Bilbo found herself rather grateful.

“How in the name of the coral should I know what things you dratted creatures say about us? I would rather plug my own ears with seaweed than listen to you all prattle on. But I’ll tell you now, when we do sing it is for our own kind alone, and we have no interest in ensnaring sailors – what would we do with them?”

“Well, I…”

“Utter flotsam, the lot of it,” the mermaid continued, her dark hair falling around her shoulders, freckled here and there with iridescent marks, somewhere between a scale and a beauty spot.

“You are rather terribly rude,” Bilbo told her, huffing a little. “We haven’t even been introduced, yet here you are, insulting one of my favourite poems, and calling me a two-legs, to boot! I’m a human, thank you very much, and if I have two legs that is only as I should be, and not a thing for you to criticise no matter how much nicer a tail may seem to you!”

Now it was the mermaid’s time to look astounded, staring at Bilbo as if she had not seen anything like her, before breaking into a bright bark of laughter.

“It takes decades for a human to come along who can even see me,” she laughed, quite bitterly. “And when they do it turns out they are more interested in social etiquette than in the fact that they can see a living, breathing mermaid! By the moon, are all of your kind like you, or are you a special exception?”

Bilbo sniffed.

“I’ll have you know that whilst many people do consider me a little odd, it is not because of my manners, which are exemplary!” she retorted, before the mermaid’s words caught up with her. “Wait, what do you mean – not all humans can see you?”

The mermaid rolled her eyes.

“Do you think I’d still be stuck in here if they did? No,” she answered, before continuing in a sing-song voice, obviously a saying that she had been taught many years ago, that once she had mocked. “Only a two-legs with a heart still willing to believe will ever see the flicker of a mermaid’s scales.”

They stared at each other then, long and steady this time.

Bilbo was not really sure what to make of that, of the knowledge that she was apparently in possession of a heart that seemed to operate as some sort of magical talisman – apart from a rather faint indignation that she had such a thing, and it had taken her this long to see anything other the rather mundane world that the rest of the world saw.

“What’s your name?” she asked, in the end, and for a moment she thought that the mermaid was not going to answer, for how affronted she looked. But then she pulled herself back up on the rock that she had been sitting on originally, her tail glistening in the last of the evening light, half turned away from Bilbo.

“Thorin,” she said, her voice quieter than before. “Though once I had titles to go with that. Now I am simply royalty in exile, doomed to be trapped here forever, far from my kin and my people.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Bilbo replied. “My name is Bilbo. Are the stories about you true? Did you sleep whilst the sea silted up at the coast, trapping this place away from the shore, turning it into a lake?”

Thorin turned then, suddenly, her eyes narrowed.

“Who tells stories such as these?”

Bilbo shrugged, a little startled.

“My mother told me them,” she replied, feeling a little guilty as Thorin’s eyes turned once more to the other side of the lake, to the distant shore, thinking no doubt of the lands that separated her now from the sea.

“Then they got those stories wrong, too,” she said, after a moment. “I did not sleep – I was trapped here. Long I waged a war against a sea-dragon that had taken residence in my palace, deep beneath the waves. Eventually I forced him from the throne of my mother, her mother – and then in haste and rage I made chase, outstripping my own loyal followers, blinded by my rage and hatred and seeing nothing but that damned dragon, wanting nothing but my revenge. But that cursed dragon had his own – I persued him to the coast, and he pinned me between his own coils and the shore, and then with the last of his dying strength he brought the cliffs crumbling down, cutting me off from my own waters, his own body becoming the new coastline, bringing it down upon himself, killing himself in his own desperate attempt to kill me with him. But he did not succeed then, though soon he will – here I linger, in water that soon I will not be able to breathe, for every year it is polluted more and more by the stink of man, by the destruction that your kind brings to all that is good and pure.”

Bilbo stared: she had nothing to say to that. The last of the light left the lake: the darkness curled around them as they sat like this, in silence, Thorin’s melancholy had wrapped around them, pulling the very warmth from the earth, the joy from the moment of discovery that Bilbo had felt just moments before. Long they sat in silence, and as they did the distance seemed to stretch between them, the space between the beach and the water growing with every moment that nothing was said. Within minutes it felt as if Thorin were far beyond her reach, and oh, how she did want to reach – though she barely knew this fair, fearsome creature, she felt inside herself a welling empathy, a desire to do something, anything, to help her.

“Why did you come here?” Thorin said, quietly, her voice bitter and cold.

“ _I came to see the damage done_ ,” Bilbo whispered. “ _And the treasures that prevail_.”

The corner of Thorin’s mouth twisted, just a little.

“More poetry,” she replied, her voice nearly lost to the sound of a distant bird, sending up its call to the moon. “More riddles. You have a silver tongue, you strange creature, but I have little use for it. Go now, leave me here to my despair, to my slow death in the dying waters.”

But Bilbo did not move: she was made of sterner stuff than perhaps even she had realised.

“You are rather dramatic you know,” she said, tracing shapes in the sand with her fingertips, and in that moment the great distance between them seemed to reduce to nothing, seemed to shrink so that all of the world might have been this beach, that rock in the water, just the two of them, and nothing more. “What if I told you that I could help you?”

 

* * *

 

“I object,” Thorin said, firmly.

Bilbo, sweating and rather pink cheeked, glared at her.

“You know I don’t have to help you!” she said in retort, stretching her aching back out.

“You should see it as an honour, to restore me to my birthright,” Thorin said, with no little arrogance as she glared at her new surroundings, looking for all her fearsome tone rather pale, and a little afraid of it all.

“Well,” Bilbo said, as she stripped off her damp outer layers. “You’ll find that I don’t feel _honour,_ only a certain satisfaction from helping a damn obstinate mermaid, and it is you that should feel _gratitude_ to me, for even trying to help you!”

Thorin did not deign to respond, and Bilbo just rolled her eyes.

It had taken them _hours_ to get from the lake back to her old camper van, which she had brought as close as she could to the shoreline after she had taken a trip to the nearest town, coming back with the largest tank that she could find. And all that was after having gone backwards and forwards from the lake with buckets, to fill it as best she could to better facilitate Thorin’s relocation. Right now the van was groaning its complaints at the unexpected burden, and Bilbo felt quite like doing the same. And all the mermaid had done was complain! She had done her very best, rigging together a sort of blanket-sleigh, upon which Thorin had rested as Bilbo had dragged her not-inconsiderable weight up the gentle hillside to the road, muscles screaming all the way. She did not deign to mention the ache in her arms and legs as she got in the front seat, slamming the door behind her as she did so, starting the engine with rather more aggression than was strictly necessary.

But if she took some satisfaction from the look of horror on Thorin’s face as the van rumbled to life, then there was no one here to judge her for it.

The idea had come to her all of a sudden, fully formed and already stretching its wings, and it had not taken all that long to put it into movement. The tank fit quite well in the back of the van, although there would certainly be no additional room there for Bilbo to lie down – which was a shame, because it would be at least an overnight trip to get to the coast now that the day had drawn on so late. But she would make do in the front seat, she supposed, in order to get Thorin back to where she belonged.

There was a satisfaction to doing this, such a singular and unselfish deed, but her newly-found positivity was being turned rather quickly, she thought, to martyrdom by Thorin’s lack of good humour about the rather inelegant method of moving her.

“I still think you could have found a better way to arrange all this,” Thorin said from the back of the van, and Bilbo rolled her eyes.

“How many years were you stuck in that lake again, without coming up with a plan at all?” she asked, and Thorin sank into a rather sulky silence that she did not break for the first couple of hours on the road. The quickest way to the coast was by no means a direct one – in just a few years a motorway would come, cleaving through the driving time and the countryside itself, but in the meantime the route took them down any number of meandering country roads, turning this way or that, and they would have to come quite close to Bilbo’s own village again. Fortunately, not close enough that they might have been stopped by any number of her nosy neighbours, who no doubt would have been rather intrigued to see Bilbo back so soon, and with a giant tank in her van. No, there was only one house that they would have to pass by, and if luck would have it they would go past quickly and without being spotted or waved down by the one person Bilbo wished to see the least in the world-

“Oh, crumbs,” she whispered, as they rounded the corner.

Lobelia’s house was a vision of wisteria this time of year, the old cottage with its tasteless modern interior hidden from the road by a true countryside exterior, which Bilbo was quite certain Lobelia actually hired a gardener to maintain, despite her protests to the contrary. And there, already rising from her deck-chair on the grass was Lobelia herself, dressed rather prettily in a white linen dress, her face already smiling, eyes hard. For a moment Bilbo considered accelerating to get past the house before Lobelia made it to the road, but the sharp bend of the road ahead made it impossible. As did, she supposed, the risk of running down her irritating relative.

Although that felt rather secondary.

“Why are we stopping?” Thorin asked as the van slowed to a stop, and Bilbo panicked, having for a moment forgotten all about the sulky mermaid.

“Throw that blanket over you!” she hissed through her teeth, catching Thorin’s perplexed gaze in the rearview mirror.

“No one can see me,” Thorin reminded her, but Bilbo was taking no chances on this – she grabbed the blanket anyway, tossing the whole thing over the tub with a skill that she would normally have been lacking, panic driving her.

“Shut up!” she muttered to the lump that was now Thorin, as Lobelia strode towards the car.

“You can always tell when you are out and about on the road, dear cousin!” Lobelia shouted as she approached. “No one else has a car quite this… vintage.”

Bilbo tried her hardest to smile, before remembering that she didn’t care, and giving up.

“And you can always hear your voice, cousin,” she replied. “No matter the other noises, it somehow always manages to rise above the rest.”

Lobelia fluttered a little, obviously waiting for Bilbo to get out of the car, which she was to be disappointed about.

“No time for a cup of tea and a natter?” she asked, eyes already peering through the van windows. “No, I suppose not, what a shame. Goodness, what is that strange thing you have hidden in a blanket?”

“A dead body,” Bilbo replied, deadpan, and Lobelia looked at her quite aghast for a moment before breaking into a bright and tinkling laughter.

“Oh, you,” she said. “You’re always such a tease! No but really, what is it?”

Bilbo was about to make her excuses and find a way to leave, but Thorin had clearly had quite enough of being hidden: she pulled the blanket from her before Bilbo could do anything other than gasp dramatically, at which point Lobelia’s expression turned a little wary, as if convinced that Bilbo had finally jumped off the deep end.

“What a… charming old tank,” Lobelia said, quite carefully, glancing quickly between it and Bilbo.

“This woman seems quite unpleasant,” Thorin remarked, her tail flicking backwards and forwards in the water.”

“Um,” Bilbo mumbled. “Yes.”

“You grow odder and odder with every passing year, dear cousin!” Lobelia told her, voice still full of curiosity.

“Your face looks like you’ve just been stung by a jelly fish,” Thorin told her, clearly trying not to laugh now (though without too much effort).  

“Um,” Bilbo mumbled, yet again. “Yes.”

This entire thing was horribly surreal: Lobelia peering through the windows at a complaining mermaid, which she could not apparently see. Bilbo could already feel the sweat gathering at her lower back, beneath the clammy fabric of her father’s old summer shirt, rolled up around the elbows. She wanted nothing more than to slam her feet to the pedals and take off before the strange magic that apparently kept Thorin invisible wore off.

“Bilbo, you do look unwell – are you sure you wouldn’t like something? Maybe a glass of water?”

“Well, yes, alright,” she said, a little flustered as Thorin suddenly let out a great gasp, turning so sharply in her tank that water sloshed down the slides, soaking the blanket pooled around it.

“My goodness,” Lobelia said, with an irritating little titter. “Are you sure you have that van parked properly?”

“What is it?” Bilbo hissed as Lobelia pattered back towards the house, to fetch Bilbo a drink. Thorin was near-thrashing in the water in agitation, and when Bilbo followed her gaze she realised that the mermaid was focused on Lobelia’s front window, behind which her artless living room was bared for all the world to see. It was to her enormous marble-fronted fireplace that Thorin was pointing, her gaze fierce, her voice even fiercer.

“She has a wishing shell!”

“What?”

Thorin turned eyes that burnt with fire to Bilbo: her face was pale, drawn and almost strange to look at. Her features, normally so composed, had morphed quite suddenly to something that might have been rage. But her voice was full of longing, and deep within her eyes was a pain that Bilbo could not find words to explain.

“That shell, inside that dwelling!”

Bilbo peered, as best as she could, through the neatly pinned-back lace curtains.

“You mean the conch, on her mantelpiece?”

Thorin waved her hands in the air, dramatic, sending a wave of water across Bilbo’s face in the meantime.

“Whatever you call it! That is a relic of my people, gifts given from the old gods, shells that give just one wish! How dare she have it!”

Bilbo bit her lip.

“I rather think that Lobelia would dare to have anything if she thought it pretty enough to go in her living room.”

Thorin turned her glare once more to her.

“What are you prattling on about? You have to get it!”

“What?”

Thorin’s eyes were wild.

“Get it!”

Bilbo was completely taken aback. “No! I’m not running into that damned woman’s house to steal a damn shell!”

“You must!”

“I must not do anything!”

“Take the shell! You cannot leave it here! She has no right!”

“I have no right to break into her house and steal it!”

“You hate her!”

“No I don’t! She’s family!”

“Your face says otherwise!”

“Well… still… That’s no excuse!”

“Why not?”

“Because… oh, fine!”

And with a growing sensation of dread Bilbo threw herself from the van and down Lobelia’s front path, through the open front door and into the living room, ignoring completely Lobelia’s should of surprise from the kitchen as she wrenched the surprisingly heavy shell from above the fireplace, tucking it under her arm as she ran back out of the house and into the van again, starting the engine and ignoring Thorin’s cry of delight as the conch shell was thrown over at her, not caring in the slightest about delicacy, gunning the engine as Lobelia came running out of the house, face a picture of anger.

“Bilbo Baggins!” she yelled as Bilbo’s van pulled hastily away. “You’ve gone to the bad, just like I always said you would! Just you wait until everyone hears, you… you… burglar!”

Bilbo’s heart was in her throat as they took the corner, pulling away from Lobelia’s wrath and further to the sea. Thorin seemed unconcerned at the controversy they were leaving behind them and was turning the shell over in her hands, staring at the soft lines of it with a peace about her features now. Bilbo watched her in the rear-view mirror, and despite the awful feeling in her chest she couldn’t help but grin at the sight of Thorin, looking so dreadfully pleased with a simple shell.

“Look at it,” Thorin whispered, more to herself than to Bilbo. “So beautiful. These things are held in the highest honour in my realm.”

And then her expression changed, shifting from satisfaction to an awe as she lifted the shell to her ear, listening intently to something within.

“What’s the matter?” Bilbo couldn’t help but ask at the changing expression, her voice quieter than she had intended it to be.

“It still has a wish in it,” was Thorin’s reply, her voice distant, strange. Bilbo blinked, bemused, trying to keep her eyes on the road.

“What do you mean?”

“You could… you could use this shell to wish for _anything_.”

Thorin seemed full of wonder, and Bilbo couldn’t help but believe that it was real – that this shell, this arbitrary ornament belonging to a distant and irritating cousin – contained some strange and ancient magic that could make just about anything happen.

After all, she was driving through the countryside in her father’s old camper van with a mermaid.

“What would you wish for, then?” she asked, expecting any number of responses from the serious to the funny. What he did not expect was for Thorin’s eyes to turn to her, bright and full of life, and for them to turn suddenly dark and empty as the question seemed to sink in. There was no answer, and when she finally replied it was as Bilbo would have suspected having seen that gaze.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Not very inspired,” she replied, trying for levity.

“I can’t quite know what I would wish for,” Thorin said, quietly. The sun around them was sinking in the sky, the light growing finally darker, and the long lines of her hair fell forward, hiding her expression just a little. “Until I return home, and see what I have missed and lost in my long absence.”

Bilbo nodded.

“Do you have family?”

“A sister, and a brother, and a mother living too when I left, though I wonder if that will still be the case. My grandmother was killed by the water-dragon, as was her partner: my sister was betrothed to another last time I saw her, and I suppose she might have had children since then – she always wanted them. My brother too, for that matter, though I can picture parenthood less on him than on her. If my mother has passed, then my sister has taken my throne.”

A family, then – and oh, there was longing in her voice, that aching loneliness that Bilbo could understand only too well, for hadn’t she felt it herself so many times in her life, since her parents had passed away, since the last of her ties had finally undone themselves, leaving her alone in a house that felt barely like a home.

“Will you take it back?” Bilbo couldn’t help but ask, and Thorin shook her head, quickly, firmly, this obviously a question that she had considered before.

“No. No, I think not. I have been by myself for a very long time, and I am not sure, now I have had a chance to think about it, that my sister has not a better temperament for rule than I.”

There was something awkward in the air now, something strange, and Bilbo was not sure quite what to do with it. The best she could do, in the end, was to shoot a quick smile over her shoulder at the mermaid, who seemed lost in her own thoughts.

“I’m sure you would have been a wonderful…. Mer-Queen.”

Thorin did not reply, and Bilbo felt empathy twist in her chest.

“You must have missed them,” she whispered in the dying light.

“Quite terribly,” Thorin replied, her voice at once raw, and honest.

“And they will have missed you, too. I’m glad to be reuniting a family, after all this time.”

If her own could not be, Bilbo could not help but think, then at least she could go some way into bringing together someone else’s.

 

* * *

 

“What are you doing?” Thorin asked. She had been silent for a long time as the evening and turned into night and they had not stopped, and though there was a part of Bilbo that wanted to carry on driving all night, she had been stifling yawns for the best part of an hour.

“Pulling over,” Bilbo replied as she pulled the car into a layby. “We’re going to have to rest a while. I can’t drive any longer.”

Thorin looked affronted.

“Why?”

“I’m tired,” Bilbo replied as she killed the engine, pulling the seat back into recline with a sigh of relief at finally being able to lay back.

“So? I have been tired many times, yet every one of them I found myself fighting on, longer, harder!” Thorin’s voice was loud in the sudden quiet of the car, and Bilbo’s jaw cracked as she let loose a wide, aching yawn.

“Oh goodness, you are exhausting!” she answered, without particular vehemence.

“And you are a weakling!” Thorin replied, clearly irritated.

 “ _And all the mermen under the sea would feel their immortality die in their hearts for the love of me,”_ she retorted. “Maybe the poets are all wrong then! I can’t imagine anyone enjoying your company enough for all of that!”

“People did, once,” Thorin said, her voice a little sulky. “Or I think they did, at any rate. It wasn’t always easy to tell, when you ruled people.”

“Many assassination attempts?” Bilbo answered, with a grin.

“None.”

Bilbo shrugged, too pleased at her comfort to be particularly annoyed at Thorin right now. She stretched, her elbows clicking at finally being able to move as they wished.

“You were probably alright then.”

Thorin did no complain any longer: if she was annoyed at the wait she did not show it, just moving a little, the water lapping quietly around her.

“What was it like?” Bilbo asked, without quite meaning to.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Ruling. Fighting a dragon. An underwater kingdom. Being trapped, for all that time. All of it. Any of it.”

She turned on her side in the seat so that she could see Thorin, just a little, over the shoulder of the chair. The mermaid’s eyes were closed, her face at peace, but after a moment she opened her eyes, looking at Bilbo with a strange warmth in her eyes.

“You believe all of this, without question. I could be lying to you at every turn, yet not once do you ever question what it is I say to you.”

“I suppose so,” Bilbo replied, not particularly perturbed. “But I don’t think you are lying.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, really,” she said, after a moment. “I suppose that you have honest eyes. They show everything that you feel, at every turn. I can’t help but feel that if you were dishonest I would know that, too.”

Thorin did not reply, for quite a while, but Bilbo did not press her. There was a comfort in the silence, something reassuring and companionable in it, so much so that she started a little at the sudden sound of her voice.

“The palace where I was born is made of crystal and rock, and sits deep within a trench of the sea. The highest towers see the sunlight, filtering through the water, but the lower levels are too deep, and are lit instead by the glowing of phosphorous that you will never find on the surface. They make the crystal glitter, green and blue, silver and gold. The colours always move, and if you stay still enough you find yourself thinking that you move with them.”

Bilbo could see it, in her mind’s eye: she felt within herself a longing growing in her chest at the description, Thorin’s words feeling almost like a spell cast around her, and as she continued her voice became lighter, caught up in the delight of her memories and drawing Bilbo into them too.

“Some merfolk look like me, but not all. I knew a man once with the lower body of an eel: another with the twisting tentacles of an octopus. The selkie come to sing to us in the high summer, at times, though we are not close allies. We are closer to the Capricorn, the hippocamp. The Oceanids are friends to us, and often they bring us tales of the other merfolk that they have met on their travels, far from us. We have our enemies too: my mother earned her renown battling the dread Charybdis; grindylow try to steal from us; the merrow are a wild bunch, who will raid us from time to time. Lusca have been known to destroy our buildings, though I often suspected that it was more in accident than anything else. We avoid sirens – they are tricksters, and care far more for the attention of two-legs than any creature of the sea ought.”

And then, quite suddenly, her voice grew sombre.

“And then, of course, there are the sea-dragons.”

“Like the one who trapped you?” Bilbo answered, her voice a whisper.

“His scales were silver-gold, and his eyes blazed with fire. That is always what I have remembered the most: that even there, far under the water, he seemed to burn.”

“He’s gone now,” Bilbo told her, trying her best to be reassuring.

“Yes,” Thorin said, though it seemed empty suddenly in the quiet of the van.

“When I left much of the palace was still in ruin,” she said, softly. “I can only hope that it has been restored.”

“I am sure your people have seen to it,” Bilbo told her. She could see it now: throngs of merpeople beneath the waves, grieving for their lost princess but banding together to recreate the glory of their people, to rebuild their buildings and their lives, always hopeful that Thorin might one day return, that she hadn’t been lost to them forever. And now that hope would be restored, and Thorin would return to them, and joy would be brought back to them once more. Like a fairy-tale, she couldn’t help but think – like a dream, near tangible to her now, something that she might be a part of.

“It is like nothing you could possibly imagine,” Thorin whispered, her voice full of longing, and Bilbo closed her eyes for a moment to the stars above them, reaching instead to rest a comforting hand on Thorin’s arm.

“ _Besides, you breathe differently down here_ ,” she said, not quite in reply, and Thorin laughed, just a little.

“In that regard, the poets are true,” Thorin answered, in the end.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me one of the stories of your adventures,” Thorin asked her, the next morning, when once more they were on the road after Bilbo had found a small camp site into the bathroom of which she had snuck into to relieve herself and freshen herself up for another day on the road. “Tell me the tales of your life, for I feel as if I regaled you with all of mine last night.”

Bilbo wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that.

“I… This is the only adventure I have ever had, unless you count the ones that I have read, and I don’t suppose they do count, not really.” She pulled a face, knowing that Thorin could not see her. “It’s not a proper adventure if you don’t leave your living room, that’s what my mother used to say.”

“Why?” Thorin asked, her voice curious, Bilbo blinked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, at a loss herself, and Thorin seemed to understand the confusion, for she snorted.

“No, not about the living room thing,” she said. “Why have you never had any adventures before now?”

“I suppose it just never quite happened,” Bilbo replied, in the end. “I had always meant to do things, to see things – yet in the end I found myself just as trapped as you were, but rather than rocks and silt, I was trapped by expectation, by convention, and I suppose too by fear.”

“Afraid of what you would find?” Thorin asked, her voice persistent, but interested, and Bilbo found herself flushing a little. She couldn’t quite remember the last time anyone had been as interested as Thorin in the story of her life – she couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had even asked her about herself. The neighbours knew her, or thought they did – what more would they have to ask?

“In a way. But I think I was more afraid of what I might realise I had left behind, if I had ever gone.”

Thorin nodded, slowly: Bilbo caught sight of the movement out of the corner of her eye.

“What would you have left behind?”

“My home,” Bilbo answered, a little hesitant, knowing that it wasn’t quite the same as Thorin’s kingdom. “Or at least, the house that I live in, though I will admit it has not been quite the same since my mother died. It feels smaller, somehow, though now I have more space than I really know what to do with. I feel lonely, when I am there, but I tell myself it is only because I miss my parents – I don’t want to go elsewhere and realise that I am lonely in other ways.”

“Would you miss it, if you left it?”

Bilbo shrugged, just a little.

“The house itself? I don’t know. I suppose I might, a little. My armchair, my books. But I think I am only as attached to them as I am because I have nothing else to be attached too.”

She fell into silence, wondering herself. Did these things even mean that much to her, in reality? How much might she miss them, should she ever leave them behind? The answer, she knew, would hurt her if she thought about it, so she tried to put it out of her mind.

“I’m sorry,” Thorin said, after a moment.

“What for?”

Thorin’s eyes were on the road ahead of them, but there was a small frown around her eyes that Bilbo caught as she glanced once more at the mermaid in the mirror, struck suddenly by how strange this all was.

“I have been… unkind to you, at times. I have been alone, for a very long time, and I suppose I have forgotten, a little, that there are feelings out there beyond my own. I have, perhaps, not been the kindest to you.”

“It is not your job to be kind to me,” Bilbo said, with a small shrug.

“No,” Thorin replied. “But I should like to try to be.”

Silence, once more, between them, but Thorin’s words had lifted Bilbo’s spirits just a little, bringing her back to herself.

“What other poetry do you know about mermaids?” Thorin asked, her hand touching the back of Bilbo’s neck for a moment, cool and damp and a little odd but for the fact that it was so clearly meant in comfort, albeit awkwardly given. She had not even realised that Thorin would be able to touch her from her tank, but apparently so. Bilbo swallowed down the lump that had grown in her throat, and shrugged.

 _“A mermaid found a swimming lad, picked him for her own,”_ she began, her voice soft. _“Pressed her body to his body, laughed; and plunging down, forgot in cruel happiness that even lovers drown.”_

“Very cheerful,” Thorin remarked, drolly, and Bilbo laughed, despite herself.

 

* * *

 

“I haven’t asked you yet,” Bilbo said, suddenly, as the miles rolled past around them. They were going slower than she had hoped now: her old van was struggling a little after its years of inactivity, and the last thing that she wanted was to have to deal with a breakdown and a petulant mermaid in one fell swoop. “Is there a particular place you want to be, err, dropped off, as it were? Where is your palace? Do you want me to try and get you as close as possible?”

“It is kind of you to think of such a thing,” Thorin said, with a laugh that was not unkind. “But it is many leagues away. Where you leave me will make little matter – and besides, I am a strong swimmer. It shall take little time to reach it.”

Bilbo grinned, despite herself.

“Have you changed much, since last they saw you?”

Thorin shrugged again.

“There is perhaps a little silver in my hair, a little less joy around my eyes,” Thorin said, though she did not sound particularly aggrieved about the change. “Otherwise, I fear I am much the same.”

“Fear?” Bilbo asked.

“They will think me a spirit at first,” Thorin said, and when Bilbo glanced over her shoulder she saw a small, wry smile around Thorin’s mouth, transforming it into something quite beautiful. “I am certain they must think I am dead.”

“They will think you a miracle when they realise,” Bilbo told her. “If nothing else.”

“They will think _you_ the miracle, not I.”

Bilbo blinked at the road ahead of herself.

“You would tell them about me?”

“But of course,” Thorin said, nodding firmly. “You, my dear Bilbo, have become the two-legs that rescued the daughter of the mer-Queen. Or sister, depending on which mer-Queen sits on the throne, I suppose. Your name shall be sung through our halls for all of my days, I shall make sure of it. Your name will join those of our most beloved heroes on the walls of our throne room: your deeds will be preserved in ballads created by the most skilled of our singers.”

“You’re mocking me,” Bilbo said, though she felt warm at Thorin’s words, even if they might have been made in jest.

“Indeed I am not,” Thorin answered, her voice quite serious. “Though I am sorry if you think I am.”

She felt incredibly young all of a sudden, quite silly and naive. Here was this mermaid, this lost and lonely princess who might have been a Queen, who had sacrificed herself to save her kingdom, who had lived an age in silence and loneliness, seeing no one, trapped for what might have been forever in a lake that had been slowly dying. And what was Bilbo, compared to that? Just a woman who had spent her quiet little life caring only for quiet little things, amongst her books and the slowly collecting dust of life around her.

“You must think me an awful twit,” she said, with a small and self-depreciating smile. Thorin’s eyes, in the mirror, were dark, and strange.

“I’m not really sure what that word means, but I can tell from your expression that it is not a nice one, and certainly not one that reflects how I feel about you.”

She blushed, again.

“Thank you.”

The day passed with quiet ease: they moved through the countryside slower and slower, stopping only once for food, which Thorin refused, saying that she needed no sustenance from anything other than the water, which she was beginning to peer at with some discomfort, though she would not be drawn on the subject. Bilbo was starting to feel rather dizzy as the evening drew in, unpleasant in her old clothes that desperately needed changing, but she knew that if she drove late into the night then they would be able to get there without any more delays, would be able to return Thorin to the sea once more.

“You need to rest again,” Thorin said, her voice quiet, her hand once more touching the back of Bilbo’s neck, as the evening light lit them pink and gold. Bilbo was shocked, glancing behind her with a curious expression.

“You were so damned impatient yesterday, I am surprised that you would let me.”

Thorin smiled, just a little, and once more her face was transformed by the expression, turning it into something quite wonderful to behold, so much so that Bilbo had to force herself to turn once more to the road.

“Well,” Thorin said, her voice teasing, but not unkind. “I suppose the sea will wait another day, but your precious sleep will not.”

They drove just a little more, and they pulled once more into a layby for the night after stopping once more for something to eat. They were at ease in each other’s company this time, chatting quietly about this and that, nothing serious or heavy. Thorin asked Bilbo once more about poetry, about her home, about the parents that she had loved and lost so very long ago. And in turn Thorin told her more stories of the deep, the world that Bilbo could see nothing of. And oh, how it made her dream, how it filled her with that same strange and aching longing, to see more of this world than she would ever know.

“It is strange, to be like this,” Thorin said, in the end, and Bilbo smiled at her, turned in her seat so that she could see Thorin properly, the long lines of her face, the soft fall of her damp hair, the silver of her eyes, the way that the street lights glinted in the water in the tank.

“What, in a tank?” she said, a little hoarse. “Yes, I rather imagine that it must be.”

“No…” Thorin said, her voice laughing for just a moment before she turned serious once more. “This far from water. Never have I gone so long without swimming, without submerging myself. I suppose it should feel worse, but knowing that soon I will be home seems to be getting me through it.”

Bilbo nodded, ignoring the twist in her chest at the reminder that soon Thorin would be gone, that once more she would be plunged back into her own little, sad life. She could have carried on like this forever, she thought to herself in this moment, could have been this person, living by the moment, for the rest of her days, seeing and learning more every time, becoming a new and better person with each day as she learnt more and more of who she was, who she could be.

“We’ll be there early enough in the morning,” she said, in the end, trying to keep the grief from her voice the best that she could. “Before lunch time, I think, unless we have any delays. Soon enough.”

“Yes,” Thorin replied, her voice barely a breath in the still air of the van between them. Bilbo fell asleep easily that night, twisted in the driver’s seat, dozing off to the sound of Thorin’s voice, singing a low and quiet song, something straining with hope, and full of longing.

She dreamt of a sky of water, of the cool caress of it all around her, and of that song, always there, almost tangible around her, full of hope, full of joy.

 

* * *

 

 

Another morning, and Bilbo stretched out, her body aching and tired still despite the long night of restful sleep that she had had. The air outside the car, when she got up, was clear and sweet tasting – quite the right kind of morning, she thought, for the last part of an adventure.

Even one that she was quite sorry to see the end of.

It was only as she turned, the sun already warm against her neck, that she looked through the car window and caught sight of the mermaid stretched out in her tank, deathly pale.

“Thorin?” she called with no little fear as she opened the car door, leaning over the mermaid. “Thorin!”

Slowly her eyes opened, her gaze not quite focused as she stared upwards at Bilbo.

“What?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“You look like death,” Bilbo said, her voice dropping near to a whisper, fear tight in her throat. The bright colours of Thorin’s tail were dull, her limbs covered in an unpleasantly green-tinged slick.

“I’m not sure I feel entirely well,” Thorin said, and her voice was so small that for a moment Bilbo was uncertain that it had come from the same brash, determined creature that she had come to know these last few days.

“What is happening?” Bilbo asked.

“The water, I think,” Thorin replied, and as Bilbo looked at it she realised that it did look a little grimy, not quite as clear as it should have been.

“What about the water? Do we need fresh water? Thorin!”

But Thorin’s eyes had closed again, her face only just above the water, her hair floating around her in a way that made Bilbo think, against her own judgement, of drowning.

“Thorin! I don’t know what to do!”

There was no response, and Bilbo felt the panic rise up within her, the same hopelessness that had chased her when her parents had passed away, a terrible loss catching up to her. In that moment she was only half a second away from collapsing on the floor, giving in entirely – and perhaps, had she been the person that she had been only a few days ago, she would have done.

But she had done things since then that she never would have thought herself capable of. She had made a plan, had rescued a mermaid, had heard the stories of the ocean’s magics and, she thought to herself with a small hiccup of a laugh, had stolen a shell from a rather unpleasant cousin, no doubt removing herself from her family’s approval and the Christmas card list, something that at one time would have been imaginable.

So instead of crying, instead of giving in, Bilbo did the only thing she could think of, and got back in the car.

It took her nearly an hour to find the nearest inhabited place on this wild stretch of land, an hour following signs and driving away from the sea, until she came upon the small farm, where a man was standing, watching her approach. He had obviously seen her coming, and he nodded at her, his funny old hat bobbing on his head as she half-fell from the car in her urgency. Thorin had not woken on her journey, no matter how much Bilbo had spoken to her, no matter how many pot-holes she had driven through in her desire for speed.

“Umm, hello there. Terribly sorry, I know this may sound a little odd, but might I borrow your tap?” she asked, breathless.

The man stared at her, for a very long moment.

“Aye, suppose so. What for?”

That was the question indeed, and Bilbo paused for a moment, trying desperately to find an answer that wasn’t a lie, but that didn’t make her look quite so strange.

“Well… I have rather a large tank in the back of my van, and I need to change the water. Gone stale, you see! Haha, rather should have thought about doing it sooner, you know how it is!”

She sounded a little manic, but she couldn’t really blame herself.

“Got something in that tank?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

She shook her head violently.

“Nope! Nothing at all! Completely empty, just needs to be… full of water. Yep. That’s about it.”

“Right…” the man said, staring at her, clearly appraising whether or not she was serious. “Need a hand?”

She sagged in relief.

“Oh, I… actually yes, I think I could do with that.”

He went to fetch his hosepipe after passing Bilbo a siphon and hose of her own, and never was she more grateful to see a long stretch of rubber. She began pumping the water out of the tank, not even noticing how it splashed her legs and the side of the car, hoping that removing the tainted water would not make matters worse. It was mostly empty by the time the man – who had introduced himself as Bofur – appeared again, staring with some bewilderment at the contents of the back of her car.

“That is a mighty big tank you have in here,” he said, after a long moment, and Bilbo felt an irrational surge of affection for the man, so willing to help.

“Ah, umm, yes… it’s for the fish!” she told him, the first thing that came to mind.

“Fish?”

“Well, yes, I’m driving to pick them up, you see. And I have to keep the tank wet because of the… coating! Yes, that’s right! It’s a special tank, for special kinds of fish, and the glass has been treated to make it better for them to live in, but it will all start peeling off if I don’t keep fresh water in it at all times.”

“Goldfish in a bowl have always been good enough for me,” Bofur said, as Bilbo pumped out the remains of the lakewater, sticking the hose in and waving a hand at someone further away, clearly waiting by the tap. “But I suppose each to his own.”

“Hahahaha yes! Well! Goodness, look at that! Lovely water!”

And ah, the relief that came as the water started to pour in around Thorin, slowly covering her scales, her naked skin. She didn’t notice Bofur’s quizzical expression, so full of relief, but when he spoke again she felt the need to laugh aloud at the fortuitousness of it all.

“Yes… good water we have, around here, though not for drinking. Can be a bit salty at times. Comes from the deep wells, and we’re close to the sea.”

“Oh, that’s perfect!”

“It is?” Bofur asked, and Bilbo nodded, no longer caring that this man probably thought her a manic.

“Well, of course! They always say that salt water is better for you, don’t they!”

And then – blessed be! – Thorin’s eyes opened.

“You’re babbling like a moron.”

Bilbo was beaming, even though she couldn’t answer Thorin’s strained voice, and as the tank finished filling she turned that grin on Bofur, who seemed more bemused than ever.

“Well, thank you most kindly for your help,” she said, shaking his hand rigorously. “You do not know just how much of a life saver you have been.”

“Any time…” he said, pulling the hose pipe back. Bilbo waved to him from the car as she drove away, her eyes on Thorin in the rearview mirror, whose colour was slowly returning to normal.

“Your face is priceless,” Thorin said, after a long moment.

“Don’t you dare do that again!” Bilbo told her, not even caring that she sounded far too like her own mother for comfort in that moment.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t actually mean to do it. Will try and avoid accidental water poisoning again.”

Thorin’s voice was dry, but Bilbo was just so happy to hear it again that she could not bring herself to be annoyed.

“Please do,” she said, everything suddenly catching up with her, her voice a little wobbly. “I was actually a little worried about you.”

“Thank you for that, though,” Thorin replied, after a long moment, softer than she had sounded before.

“You’re more than welcome.”

The fear was receding now, slowly but surely, and Bilbo glanced over her shoulder quickly, to see Thorin for herself.

“I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to you,” she found herself saying, without quite meaning to, before looking back at the road.

“Yes, I suppose it might have been quite difficult to sort out the arrangements.”

“Shut up,” Bilbo said, sinking back into their bickering like a comfortable armchair. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

“I know,” Thorin said, her voice sincere, almost odd compared to her normal tone. “And thank you, again.”

Another long silence, as the miles crept passed them, and then the question that Bilbo could not stop herself from asking forced itself out of her mouth, though she was not entirely certain that she wanted to hear the answer.

“Did you know that the water was going to do that to you?” Bilbo asked, as they made their way back towards the sea. “Did you know that it would hurt you in this way?”

“I didn’t,” Thorin admitted, sounding a little guilty. “It is my first time in a tank you know.”

“But you suspected?”

“Perhaps.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Bilbo said, upset despite the fact that the situation had resolved itself. “We would have got you to the sea last night!”

“You were tired,” Thorin said, after a moment. “You needed rest.”

“Better me tired than you dead!”

“I’m sorry,” was the reply, her voice that strange softness that Bilbo did not know what to do with again. “I did not want to worry you.”

“After all this whining you thought that I would draw the line at you possibly dying?”

But their argument ended quite abruptly, quite suddenly, as they crested the headland and saw before them the great expanse of the sea stretched out before them, a vista of blue-grey, calm today beneath the fair sky.

 

* * *

 

It was not quite so difficult, getting Thorin from the car to the pier, and the process had a certain satisfaction this time, knowing that she had reached the journeys end, that she had achieved everything that she had meant to. Thorin fell from the tarp into the water quite inelegantly, rolling herself into the embrace of the water in her desperation, and for a moment Bilbo thought, with some panic, that she would not reappear, that this would be it, without a farewell. But when Thorin’s head crested the water, hair gleaming wet, the panic went once more, leaving Bilbo feeling quite suddenly heartbroken.

There is satisfaction in endings, but no matter how much, it was an ending nonetheless, and she wasn’t quite sure if she was ready for it.

“I will miss you, no matter how much of a prat you might be,” Bilbo said, rubbing at her eyes as she sat down on the pier, her legs trailing over the sides, trying to stop the well of tears that threatened to overcome her. “And I bet you can’t come back, can you?”

Thorin shook her head, though she did not look particularly happy about it. Her silence was damning enough, and Bilbo found her eyes drifting to the sea once more, to the deep, dark waters that Thorin had so longed for, that she herself had so longed to see. This had been the whole point of this, she knew, yet now they were here she was far too afraid of it all ending – this friendship, this adventure, this thrill of seeing the new and beautiful in the world, of doing what she wanted to do, rather than what was expected of her. She knew with some certainty that when she left this pier she would drive back through the countryside, away from the sea and the siren call of adventure, back to her quiet little routines and her dull little life, where she was content, if not truly happy. What place was there for Thorin, for her own dreams, in that life? None at all, she suspected – there was barely enough room for her own eccentricities, after all.

“This is where you belong,” Bilbo said, quite quietly, and Thorin stared at her, her gaze hard and soft at the same time, piercing, as if looking for something in Bilbo’s own eyes. Her hands were either side of Bilbo’s legs, she realised quite suddenly, bracketing her, closer than they had any need to be.

“You could belong here too, if you liked,” Thorin said, in the end. “I do not know much of your world, or what it might mean for you to leave it, but should you want to…”

She trailed off, looking once more into Bilbo’s eyes before pushing herself upwards, resting her weight on her arms as she pressed a kiss to Bilbo’s mouth. Then she was gone, slipping back into the water and out of sight, before Bilbo even had a chance to ask, to say anything at all. It was only when Bilbo raised her hand to her lips, her eyes turning to the horizon, that she realised that Thorin had left the conch on the pier beside her, the soft curves of it shining slightly in the early morning light.

“ _I would be a mermaid fair,_ ” she whispered to herself. Thorin’s mouth had tasted of brine, cool and damp, a taste worth chasing. But there were things to do, a house to return to, affairs that she had neglected for far too long. Things to do and responsibilities to uphold. She was a Baggins, after all, and no Baggins ignored their responsibilities. No Baggins followed their heart and their hopes. They stayed at home and did what they should.

“ _I would sing to myself the whole of the day, with a comb of pearl I would comb my hair, and still as I comb'd I would sing and say, ‘who is it loves me? who loves not me?_ '”

But then, of course, a Baggins could change.

With a smile she reached for the shell, and pressed her mouth to the opening of it, to the soft and smooth pink of it, the tip of her tongue moistening her lips for just a moment before she breathed her wish into the depths of it.

And then, and then.

There was no one there to witness the moment as the shell breathed its wish back out, no one to chronicle the sigh of change as it slipped across the pier, no one to hear the sound tearing fabric and a joyous laugh, short and sweet, as limbs shifted and changed. No one saw the removal of layers of clothing no longer needed or wanted – when Bilbo pushed herself off the pier, sliding beneath the surface and taking a deep breath of cool water, no one was there to witness her. But there was a pair of dark eyes watching her beneath the water, wide in relief and admiration of a tail only recently come into existence.

Bilbo’s van sat long abandoned on the shore before anyone found it. By then, they were long away, within the caress of the deepest waters.

The best of stories, or so they say, end with the beginning of a whole new adventure.

 

* * *

 

 _She cried, she clasped me fondly,_  
We soon were in the sea.  
\- Vachel Lindsey

**Author's Note:**

> Other scraps of poetry come from:  
> The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T. S. Eliot  
> Diving into the Wreck - Adrienne Rich  
> The Mermaid - Lord Alfred Tennyson  
> A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid - W. B. Yeats
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](http://northerntrash.tumblr.com/)!


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